In its role as occasional patron of the arts, the Guardian Northerner is pleased to bring you a piem by Ian McMillan, the Yorkshire laureate. A piem is a poem about pies.

Ian has burst into song to celebrate National Pie Week which is naturally very big in the north, which leads the pie world by some margin, albeit with Well Tried certificates for places such as Melton Mowbray and Cornwall.

NPW is this week, and in few places does it have more resonance than Denby Dale, the Pennine village with a tradition of baking unfeasibly large pies. This dates back to 1788 when they loyally baked a pie to celebrate King George III's recovery from insanity. Luckily he wasn't around in 1887 when they didn't cook the meat right through and the whole vast mess was buried at Toby Spout. He would have gone mad again.

Another low point in the Great Pie tradition was much more recent, when the small but high quality Denby Dale Pie company housed under the echt northern railway viaduct went into receivership. It was then rescued, along with its 17 jobs, by food entrepreneur Andrew Hayes, and this helped prompt Ian's poem, as well as the sheer niceness of pies.

Here it is. If Yorkshire's many other laureates such as Simon Armitage and Ian Duhig would like to send us a pie poem, we'd be thrilled. Or send one yourself, in the style of late great YLs such as Philip Larkin or Vernon Scannell.

DENBY DALE PIEM

It's pleasing to the noseAnd delightful to the eyeWait till you taste that Denby Dale pie!It's a symphony of crust,Taties, gravy and meatA Denby Dale pie makes your life complete!

They've been making pies in Denby DaleFor centuries and moreThey're as Yorkshire as puddings and good strong aleYou can smell 'em through the cottage door!They've been eating pies in Denby DaleSince King George was a youth!Each massive pie could tell a taleor a slice of historical truth!

They're making them againAnd the pie-maker's artIs once more close to this town's heart!So all those in favourStand and bellow Aye!Then have a taste of that there Denby Dale Pie!

If you feel the need to have Ian's warmly enjoyable tones reciting this 'piem', then here they are on YouTube.

My biography for him says that he is the 22nd most powerful person in radio and that cats make him sneeze, so I pass that on. Denby Dale Pies (small ones, not the monsters) can be bought at Yorkshire stores of the Co-Op, Morrisons, Asda, Tesco and Sainsburys, and at all Booths stores.